Hi, I’m Jeannette and this is The Sex Beat, a newsletter documenting my research on sex. As always, if you no longer want to get this newsletter, unsubscribe here. I’m writing this piece on an island in Sabah, Malaysia and have probably had too much to drink.
Being semi-tipsy on the beach made me think of cocktails, especially the ones that have risqué, irreverent or explicitly sexual names.
Sex on the Beach, Slippery Nipple, Between the Sheets – these are just a few of the cocktails I read about and learned the recipes of when I was bartending.
Where did these names come from? What are their stories? And what do the names say about the social milieu in which these cocktails were created?1
Alcohol has a past that’s linked to the sexual, and like sex, has spurred moral panic as well. One word: Prohibition, with a capital P.
But cocktails are interesting because they came out of Prohibition, and they presented a more acceptable way for people, especially women, to drink in public. However, this was also why they were seen as a moral risk.
Seaton (1994) wrote about how “cocktail occasions” increased the opportunities for women to meet men. Where before (in Victorian society), women who drank in public were usually thought of as “prostitutes and tarts”, it was now “in vogue” for women to drink cocktails at mixed gender private parties and public places (p. 38).
This moral risk was seen as even greater because of how the cocktails were named i.e., with sexual innuendo that “brazenly linked women and drinking in contexts connoting pleasure and amusement” (p. 38).
What’s in a name?
The naming of cocktails evolved along with the social cultures at the time. In the 1920s, when Freud’s ideas were being circulated, cocktail names reflected ideas of sexual liberation as well.
“Cocktail names alluded to hedonistic sexuality in a way never before inscribed within alcoholic signification (except in a few drinks thought to be aphrodisiacs). Sex became speakable, in fun or earnest, over drinks named: Hot Night No. 1, Between the Sheets, Bosom Caresser, Diki-Diki, Hanky Panky, Sweet Desire, Maiden's Blush, Virgin Nos. 1, 2, 3, Whip No. 1 and 2, Passion Fruit, Monkey Gland, Eastern Sin, One Exciting Night, Widow's Dream, Morning After, Temptation, Cupid, Welcome Stranger, and the Fallen Angel Cocktail” (Seaton, 1994, p. 42).
And then there’s the “Swinging Schnapps Era”, when marketing and consumer culture took on the cocktail. Cocktail lore puts Sex on the Beach as a product of this era.
The story is that in the 1980s, a Florida bartender created this cocktail to increase sales of peach schnapps to young people on spring break. But like most cocktail origin stories, we can’t be entirely sure if this is truly the case.
What we do know however, is that Sex on the Beach remained a staple on cocktail menus until the 1990s. (In case you’re wondering what goes in this cocktail, it’s made with vodka, peach schnapps, orange and cranberry juice.)
Are these cocktail names sexist?
Getti (2003), in an essay examining the sociolinguistic signification of cocktail names, highlights the “performance ritual” that these cocktail names demand from women.
For example, she writes:
“The Blow Job… is served in a tall, slim shot glass whose brim is gripped between the teeth of the female consumer who is urged by spectators not to spill a drop” (p. 108).
She also cites Spradley and Mann (1975), who say that these drink names give men the “opportunity to manipulate language for a variety of ends” (p. 143). For example, asking someone at a bar, “Would you like a Slow Screw?”2
But this analysis was written in 2003 and it's been almost 20 years since then. So I do wonder if, in this day and age, it’d be perfectly acceptable for a woman to walk up to a man and say, “Would you like a Screaming Orgasm?”
And if so, are these sexual cocktail names still sexist?
References:
Gatti, S. I. (2003). Fuzzy navels and slippery nipples: A sociolinguistic reading of the cocktail menu. The Journal of American Culture, 26(1), 104-110.
Seaton, A.V. (1994). Cocktail Culture in the 1920s and 1930s: Prefiguring the Postmodern. Hospitality Research Journal, 18(2):35-52.
Spradley, J.P. and Mann, B.J. (1975). The Cocktail Waitress: Women’s Work in a Man’s World. New York: Knopf.
Now that I’ve seen a couple of journal articles about “theorising cocktails”, I’m suddenly curious about analysing the cocktail menus of bars in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. What would their cocktail programs imply about these cities and their relationships with global society?
If it’s night time, the answer should be no. The Slow Screw is a combo of gin, sloe gin and orange juice, which in my books is a brunch drink.